Thursday, August 24, 2017

How Undercover Activists Targeted Breitbart and White Nationalist Sites and Their Advertisers

"The Sleeping Giants team began its campaign by tweeting at various companies, letting them know their ads appeared at Breitbart and explaining how to get rid of them. The tactic was a surprising success. Many companies blacklisted Breitbart from its ad buys, and a growing number of Twitter users took note and helped inform companies of their ad placement at the far-right hub of the racist “alt-right.”

“We didn’t think this would be more than two weeks long, so to say that it’s met or exceeded our expectations is not even close,” said the Sleeping Giants organizer. The primary Sleeping Giants Twitter account boasted nearly 105,000 followers as of August 22."

"Now, roughly eight months after Sleeping Giants began this effort, nearly 2,600 companies have removed their ads from Breitbart. The flow of deserting companies has quickened since the Charlottesville rally, the organizer said. These days, 15 to 20 companies are dropping Breitbart each day. Among those that have ditched Breitbart are Aveda, CVS, Etsy, Kellogg and TurboTax. Amazon, however, remains a holdout, despite employee efforts to persuade the company to remove its ads."

"This is a fight for territory in the information warfare battlespace. The Left understands they can’t win in the political battlespace in the USA, and they realize that his use of social media helped Trump in 2016. So the Left needs to control the information warfare battlespace, which is run by private companies — who can decide the applicability of terms of service in whatever manner they choose, under our First Amendment, to banish any organization or citizen from their companies on the internet."

"It’s a smart plan. As usual, conservatives and libertarians still don’t know what’s hitting them, much less what lies ahead."